The Application of Receptor Modeling to Air Quality Data

摘要

Receptor modeling is the application of data analysis methods to elicit information on the sources of air pollutants. Typically, it employs methods of solving the mixture resolution problem using chemical composition data for airborne particu-late matter samples. In such cases, the outcome is the identification of the pollution source types and estimates of the contribution of each source type to the observed concentrations. It can also involve efforts to identify the direction of local sources using wind directions or the locations of distant sources through the use of ensembles of air parcel back trajectories. In recent years, there have been improvements in the factor analysis methods that are applied in receptor modeling as well as easier application of trajectory methods. These methods are now in widespread use. The theoretical basics of the methods will be presented and the recent literature will be reviewed.